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Flaws in three genes could help explain the high incidence of a type of nose and throat cancer in parts of southern China , scientists said on Sunday.
Experts from China, Singapore and the United States trawled through a genetic datamine of around 10,000 people of southern Chinese descent.
Half of the volunteers had been diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a cancer that forms in the lining of the upper throat lying behind the nose. The other half were otherwise healt...

US scientists have developed a new vaccine that has the potential to cut the disease by 70 per cent, thereby offering new hope to millions of women suffering from breast cancer.
The jab will be tested on humans next year.
It works by boosting the immune system, which attacks a protein called alpha-lactalbumin that occurs in most breast cancers.
By destroying every trace of it, the tumours don't develop and existing ones are shrunk by up to hal...

Three new susceptibility genes have been identified in a genome-wide association study of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) by scientists from Singapore, China and USA.
The study, led by the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a biomedical research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Centre, identified genetic risk factors of NPC that advance the understanding of the important role played by host genetic variation...

Researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center have found that in pancreatic cancer, when tumours respond most to preoperative chemotherapy and radiation, the patient is four times more likely to survive than those whose tumors respond.
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is rarely detected in early stages, making treatment difficult and survival statistics particularly grim.
In 1986, the Center conducted the first trial in pancreatic cancer of "multimodal" preoperative the...

A new research has found that circulating tumour cells are associated with poorer survival in pancreatic cancer patients.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, also uncovered evidence that not all circulating tumour cells are the same, and some may predict worse outcomes than others.
Benjamin P. Negin, M.D., a medical oncology fellow at Fox Chase, said: "Eventually, we hope we can use changes in number of circulating...

Researchers have reported that over half a million women in the United States undergo a hysterectomy each year and approximately half of those surgeries include removal of the ovaries.
Researchers know that removing a woman's ovaries is associated with a reduction in the risk of developing breast cancer, but it has not been clear whether those cancers that do arise in these women differ from breast cancers in the general population. Now, investigators at Fox Chase Cancer Center repor...

Doctors are debating the best treatment approach for patients with certain stages of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which accounts for about 80 percent of all lung cancers.
Patients with early stages of NSCLC are typically treated with surgery, but those with stage IIIA present more of a challenge because they are such a diverse group. However, research from Fox Chase Cancer Center shows that patient's with stage IIIA NSCLC who receive surgery, lobectomy in particular, have i...

A new discovery may help explain how certain cancers develop. This finding has been made by a Florida State University College of Medicine researcher.
Yoichi Kato, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, and his lab team found discovered a new interaction between a cell signaling system and a specific gene that may be the cause of B-cell lymphoma.
The finding suggests a similar interaction could be occurring during the ...

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center say shark cartilage extract, AE-941 or Neovastat, has shown no benefit as a therapeutic agent when combined with chemotherapy and radiation for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was first presented at the 43rd annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The absence of blood vessel...

UK scientists have been given the go-ahead to test a vaccine, which they believe, could be a potential weapon in the fight against malignant melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer.
Lead author Professor Lindy Durrant of Nottingham University, and colleagues hope that the new vaccine, which targets tumour cells without damaging healthy tissue, could reverse, and even cure malignant melanoma.
"Up until now, early diagnosis has been a crucial factor in the successful ...